Just out of curiousity, are there still 8th ed druchii members out there?i'm still try to get a game in every once in a while with one of my 2 mates who play(ed) warhammer.But i notice that the absence of new editions/updates or buzz on the internet what so ever is damping our spirit somewhat.

9th edition let alone AoS isn't really for me. I've been a fan since 5th edition and even though we house ruled a few things, i find it hard to just switch.

so are there some people still as "nostaligic" as i am, or even better are there any dutchies who could offer me a game of good old 8th edition warhammer?

"I move unseen. I hide in light and shadow. I move faster than a bird. No plate of armour ever stopped me. I strike recruits and veterans with equal ease. And all shiver at my coldest of whispers."- The stiff breeze

Both army used only Warhammer models and were perfectly fluffy armies that could have been fighting in the old world.

It was an objective base game, and it was a close one.

I managed to hold the center objective in a forest for a while with my shadows but at the very last turn a rat swarm regiment that had done nothing the whole game until then (my opponent had badly deployed them and other units kept being in the way) happened to be just at the right place to charge the shadows in the rear (the shadows had turned to finish another unit that they couldn't ignore). This switched the number of objective controlled in favor of my opponent, he already controlled the left flank and its objectives completly while I had the right flank under control myself, so the center objective was the breaking point in this game.

I had in theory a backup plan, as my cold one knights had just finished their own target and reorganised to face towards the forest and the objective, ready to charge the rats as even with the forest removing a large part of the offensive potential of the knights, I still had a decent chance to kill the swarm.But my opponent saw this coming and sacrified his own army standard by putting him in front of my knights. Sure, with an individual you get to overrun, but overrun is only 1d6" and the swarm was initially at the extreme range of a normal charge, so I killed the banner but it delayed me long engough that I didn't make it in time to the objective and I got a minor lost.

I started playing Warmachine & Hordes for a little bit, but decided it wasn't anything for me (I actually found the game to be outright boring).

After having a break from fantasy battles, instead playing X-Wing for tournaments (won nationals, woohoo) and Infinity with friends, I decided it was time to give Kings of War a chance and I am currently having quite a bit of fun with that (playing elves as Twillight kin is somewhat frowned upon around here).

I gotta say I like it a lot, although the rules are somewhat simiplified and you don't get those incredible build options that made WHFB somewhat unique... but still, it is faster and easier to play, leaving it more into your own hands to play well instead of figuring out some one-trick-pony list.

Of course, there will always be cheese to use and abuse in such games...

_________________Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10

I think if GW were to re-release WHFB as a specialist game, they'd be better off going with one of the older editions rather than the one that drove the franchise into a ditch. I'd love to see 6th edition updated with all the new troop types that were introduced later, like the kharibdyss and medusa.

_________________"Sometimes, Brother... I dream that I am sane." - Uros the Faceless

damn, time flies!We made the switch to 40k and i am enjoying it a lot more then i suspected, i am a bit annoyed about all tthe love it gets from GW now, with specialist games, the online community etc etc. and i think it could have saved WHFB,besides they are doing some awsome models for AoS aswell.

hardly played any 8th. even though we have all the scenario and army books from this edition..Idd love a mordheim update, in the old world, preferably for 8th edition. I want to introduce mordheim to my gaming group and it would make a transition to WHFB a lot easier if they learn the rules for smaller warbands first.

I think if GW were to re-release WHFB as a specialist game, they'd be better off going with one of the older editions rather than the one that drove the franchise into a ditch. I'd love to see 6th edition updated with all the new troop types that were introduced later, like the kharibdyss and medusa.

8th edition was by far the best GW ever created. That may be a hugely controversial statement, but I'll explain my logic (in no particular order):

1. The "Stepping Up" rule. This rule made games far more epic and fun than ever before. Gone were the ridiculous days of elite units wiping out the front ranks of the enemy, depriving them of any chance to strike back and making them basically auto runaway. That was not only unrealistic, but also made one fights really miserable for the side who didn't get to strike first.

2. Making it okay to measure distances whenever you want. Before 8th edition, an inordinate amount of time was wasted on heated arguments about whether a charge had reached its destination or not. Was the distance between models 16.1 inches or 15.9"? This really bogged games down and left the losing player with a bitter taste in their mouth, especially given how important charges were because the side who charged got to go first and there was no stepping up rule. With the new rules, you could measure the distance between the two units, agree with your opponent as to how far the distance was before rolling, and then roll to see if your unit made it. It was much less heated this way and made the game more fun. Yes, the fact that your charge distance was then controlled by the dice roll rather than calculation added more randomness to the game, but there were ways to control from this (e.g. move that flanking unit of dark riders to within 11" of the enemy unit's rear or flank the turn before so that you are guaranteed to make the charge or use multiple chariots rather than just one when trying to do a combi chariot-unit charge) and at least the outcome was decided by a random roll and not who could argue more aggressively that it really was 15.9" and not 16.1" between the two units.

3. The removal of "fear causes autobreak" rule, which crippled games. It was silly to see a unit of elite elves lose combat by a single point against some very mediocre skeletons or their ilk and then run away despite having a super high leadership just because the skeletons caused fear.

4. Hordes and deep units. The aspect of warhammer that always appealed to me was its epicness - vast waves of troops clashing together in colossal struggles. Yet, the rules before 8th edition encouraged an upper limit of 20 models in a unit (4 ranks of 5 - occasionally more, but never really above 6 ranks of 5) and rewarded elite units (see point 1 above). The horde rules, combined with Stepping Up, made people field really big units in big armies that allowed the kind of epic clashes that I always imagined to come to reality. The fact that units stood around to slog it out over several turns, allowing a variety of different units to get tangled into the mix, all added to that sense of massed combat.

5. The scissor-paper-stone system. 8th edition came under a lot of fire for its magic system, which was billed as being too strong and too game changing. I agreed at first, but after a few games I realized that the critique was wrong. The game presented a scissor-paper-stone setup in which big units could beat little units (e.g. a big horde of pikemen would mow through multiple small units without much problem, but magic could beat big units (e.g. dwellers below would eat the pikemen horde for breakfast), and little units could beat magic (e.g. multiple small units could run around the flanks of the enemy and through gaps in their lines to kill the magic casters). You thus had to balance all of these factors when building your army and that led to a surprisingly balanced game. The game punished people who favored one of the three approaches over the other (e.g. someone who brought nothing but big hordes would feel salty when they were fragged easily by magic or someone else who brought huge amounts of magic would feel equally upset when their wizards were sliced and diced by fast riders or flying skirmishers) but that was how it should be.

6. The dialing back of saves. By changing the old three save model (armour save, ward save, regen save) to just two (armour save followed by either ward or regen save), as well as restricting the old 0+ saves to a minimum of 1+ saves, the game struck hero hammer another blow.

7. The "Stalwart" special rule. By changing it so that units who lost combat could test on their unmodified leadership rather than their modified leadership if they had more ranks than their enemy, 8th edition removed the risk that a single hero or tiny unit could rout a much larger force, which again made the game much more realistic and more fun. Watching a single character on a dragon destroy an entire enemy army by himself was miserable for the person on the receiving end and not actually that much fun for the person with the dragon lord of doom either.

There were a range of mistakes in 8th edition, such as the overpowering and over-provision of ASF as a rule that somewhat broke the elven factions, but these paled in comparison to the positives.

8th edition ruffled a lot of feathers because people were used to the older version of strategic positioning and elite units creaming massed blocks, but it was a better game without a doubt, even though it was a different game from that which we had been familiar with in earlier days.

_________________"While all answers are replies, not all replies are answers. So answer the question."

I agree with RED's explanation.I was upset when 8th came out: it seemed to me a different game compared to 7th (I had to see worse things happen in the future, but I knew nothing by then)So I kept playing 7th ed for 1 year after 8th was out.When I finaìlly got trying 8th ed., I discovered all the nice things that RED illustrated above.

8th was a more balanced game, featuring very large units, prolonged fights with no guaranteed auto breaks, and not too overpowered heroes.I've played WHFB since third edition, and I'm not an Oldhammer enthusiast.3rd, 4th and 5th edition were far too unbalanced and focused on herohammer.6th and 7th were significantly better, and 8th was top in my opinion.I kind of appreciated end times too.Then everything ended for me.

Sorry for the final rant.

Every now and then I still play 8th.

_________________... and Justice for all!!!

.... and enthusiast member of the league of extraordinary druchii gentlemen

This is me speaking as someone who used to work for GW and still has friends there. The flow of new people into the WHFB side of the hobby pretty much disappeared thanks to 8th edition.

Hardly anyone who didn't already own hundreds of pounds' worth of minis was ever going to be willing to get into a game where even elite units had to be 30+ models strong to be worth a damn. Not at GW prices (over £100 for a single Witch Elf regiment). So virtually all GW's new customers just played 40K instead, because you could get a reasonably usable army for the cost of that Witch Elf regiment. The entire WHFB range's sales dropped to less than the Space Marine Tactical Squad alone.

I don't dispute that 8th edition was fun for the people who already had established armies and/or the time and money to field huge units. But it was a disaster for GW.

_________________"Sometimes, Brother... I dream that I am sane." - Uros the Faceless

8th edition was a gamble.Old players who had all the units featured in previous editions, when a new edition came out, bought the new manual only.

every 8th ed. army had one or two new units, and required an increase in number of the existing units, so old players were forced to buy new models to remain competitive.

GW underestimated the entry level price for a newcomer, and lost new players.

I don't buy AoS stuff, but my 2 cents is that new stuff is very expensive, much more than 8th ed. stuff.What's positive is that you need lesser numbers for your army.New players flocked to buy AoS goodies, or so it seems

_________________... and Justice for all!!!

.... and enthusiast member of the league of extraordinary druchii gentlemen

This is me speaking as someone who used to work for GW and still has friends there. The flow of new people into the WHFB side of the hobby pretty much disappeared thanks to 8th edition.

Hardly anyone who didn't already own hundreds of pounds' worth of minis was ever going to be willing to get into a game where even elite units had to be 30+ models strong to be worth a damn. Not at GW prices (over £100 for a single Witch Elf regiment). So virtually all GW's new customers just played 40K instead, because you could get a reasonably usable army for the cost of that Witch Elf regiment. The entire WHFB range's sales dropped to less than the Space Marine Tactical Squad alone.

I don't dispute that 8th edition was fun for the people who already had established armies and/or the time and money to field huge units. But it was a disaster for GW.

There's some merit to this argument, but I'm not wholly convinced. I think the real demise of the franchise came from a perfect storm of factors, of which 8th edition's attributes played a role but it was not the only force at play.

It is certainly true that 8th edition raised the cost and time threshold higher for younger players to get into the game - 30 witch elves was a lot of money to buy. Even the boxed set wasn't really playable out of the box because it didn't have enough models, which was a bit unfortunate. Yet, the example is a little specious (you have taken a prime example of a very expensive non-plastic set of models to prove your point, but most entry level models were plastic and a regiment box of dark elves, for example, was still quite affordable and playable with, especially if your buddies had similarly sized starting forces). The cost of GW's models have been going up for years, but the cost of a new army from start to finish was still in the same sort of ballpark as buying a new games console with a bunch of games.

It is also true that rumours and first impressions killed a lot of the fervour for the game amongst veteran players. In my gaming group, there were mass defections away from the game as a concept after 8th edition was released.

On the surface, then, it would seem that the reaction to 8th edition (quality of the game notwithstanding, as argued above) caused it a lot of problems and that is true. BUT it was not the defining factor because there were a myriad of other dynamics that contributed and these would have hit the franchise anyway, regardless of whether they remained with 7th or released a more 6th or 7th ed like version instead of 8th.

One: the rise of computers, consoles, smart phones, and other video games. For years, GW has been battling against the rise of competitors for the disposable incomes of kids and their parents, young adults, and adults. As video/computer/phone games have become better in quality, more prevalent in circulation and societal acceptance, and easier to learn and play, and this has hurt all of its franchises. Dawn of War gave 40k a huge boost, but there was no comparable win for Fantasy to help it ride with the storm (ironically, Total War: Warhammer had this potential but it came after the plug had been pulled on 8th ed). Most importantly, though, phone games have been changing the attention span level that gamers possess. Fantasy was always a slower and more gradual build up of a game than 40k (with its whizzing deep strikers, jet bikers, flying transports, and guns of all sizes with big ranges, etc) and so it was hurt more by gamers wanting a quicker and more instant gratification experience as a result of changing expectations than 40k.

Two: the rise of other miniature games. 8th edition led to massed defections by my old gaming group but, in a vacuum, that would not have happened. What facilitated my buddies leaving the game was the arrival of a whole host of other games such as Warmachine and Malifaux. In fact, looking back, it was not that everyone was playing 7th edition and then 8th edition came along and everyone dropped it, it was that we were already not playing 7th edition anymore in favour of these other games. The shock was that when 8th edition came along, it didn't pull the group back in for more than a couple of months, after which most of my buddies went back to playing the other games. I'm not sure that a continuation of 7th or even a reversion to 6th type rules would have had any better impact than what happened with 8th.

Three: model saturation. The reason 8th edition placed so much emphasis on big units and tons of models was not wholly because it made the game better and more epic (which it did), but because GW was desperately conscious of the fact that most established players already owned all of the models they needed and that they didn't have enough newer players joining the game to compensate (they had mostly been flocking to 40k or video/computer/phone games for a while anyway). That was a problem GW was already facing at the end of 7th and was not a problem created by the arrival of 8th.

I think the overall point I'm trying to make is that Fantasy had been rolling downhill towards the edge of the cliff for some time before the arrival of 8th edition. The rise of popular alternatives to miniature gaming for people wanting a war game fix, a reduction in attention spans amongst players (including not only kiddies but also many adults), the rise of other more specialist gaming systems for miniature purists, and the saturation of GW models amongst older players (and ebay options for younger ones) had all been taking their toll. Did 8th edition help save the franchise? No, it inflicted its own wounds, but the state of the game's player base had been in poor straits for quite a while prior to 8th edition even being conceptualized and to blame it all on 8th would be missing a good chunk of the picture.

So, I think the idea that re-releasing 6th edition as a specialist game would be better than re-releasing 8th because the former would draw more players doesn't hold water. Those players who dropped warhammer didn't drop it because of 8th, they had already dropped it or were on their way to do so in the near future. I would rather GW went with the better game version of 8th ed over the unlikely idea that re-releasing 6th ed would do better in terms of player take-up.

Of course, the whole debate is somewhat moot because GW isn't going to re-release either version. *sigh*.

_________________"While all answers are replies, not all replies are answers. So answer the question."

And it didn't help that GW had in general been less than polite with their customers, writing rules with loopholes and inconsistencies you could sail a battleship through, and then refusing to follow up with FAQ's and errata in a timely manner for years.

I haven’t touched 8th in years and never intend to. T9A is a superior game by far, with the same aesthetic and appeal. I highly recommend trying it if you haven’t already.

That being said, ive also just dipped my toe into AoS. Is it the same? No, and that’s true point. I have T9A for massed battle games, and AoS for high fantasy, over the top, pseudo-skirmish combo awesomeness. It’s a win win.

I was all for T9A when it was still "Nexthammer". Then it did a 90 degree turn and became "Nothammer" and I lost interest.

If it works for you, more power to you. Go, play, have fun. I'll stick to 8th.

I have no idea what this means. Is it nothammer because it doesn’t use GW IP? Sure, but you can still use the same models in much the same way. Are there different mechanics, sometimes radically so? Yes again, but there were radical differences between 7th and 8th too, and they were both “warhammer”. What’s the difference between “next” and “not”? Where is the line drawn?

The spirit of warhammer style masses battles is alive and well with T9A with the only difference being that it’s not an official Gw product. That’s both good (design freedom and no production/sales schedule to keep to) and bad )loss of IP and no corporate resources to draw upon).

I’ll never understand the “nothammer” criticism. It’s so nebulous that it just comes across as insubstantial if not lazy. It’s a real shame because the 2.0 beta is a great system and fans of 8th are really missing out.

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